I wanted to provide what will hopefully be clarifications for streamlining your student travel experiences for the spring semester. As I have discussed in several department chair and faculty meetings during the fall, we have worked to provide a more simplistic and supportive student travel approval process. My most sincere appreciation to all of you who offered insight and suggestions and to Jen Ferrell, Jim Draper, Paul Striffolino and Sue Castriotta for the support to make this happen. My particular appreciation to Sue Castriotta for the creation of the attached process flow charts and tips for streamlining (with embedded links) below.

The goals for our work were to :

Provide a clear and simple process to complete authorization and tracking paperwork.

Provide training and education for request approvers to avoid creating unnecessary limitation for important experiences and high impact practices (a first training program was completed for academic affairs division approvers prior to the winter break)

Provide faculty and instructional staff with a less repetitive process for approvals when trips occur more than one time in a single class.

During the spring semester I welcome your feedback on this effort to ease the process. I will also continue to welcome suggestions for continued improvements so that we will maintain our focus on high impact practices while limiting your personal liability and the liability for the institution associated with off campus experiences. Areas of continued work will include:

Document completion by students at time of admission to the college to support a dramatically streamlined process

Other….

Tips for streamlining the required student travel process for courses that include frequent travel

Submit pre-approval form well in advance of the first expected off campus experience.

This is for awareness of upcoming trips for the semester. Be sure to meet with Dean and/or Dean’s Administrative Assistant to discuss any needs requiring funding (ex. vans, admission fees, etc.) or scheduling so that arrangements can be made ahead of time. Using the waiver form, a faculty member could submit a single pre-approval for multiple trips in the same course.

Bring the completed Student Travel Supplement (or have it as well filled in as possible) to the meeting. This will help with the planning. All information could be collected once for multiple trips in the same course, see below.

Note, Have students complete the following paperwork within the first week of class to support your streamlined approval:

On the back side of the pre-approval form (under Exhibit A) where the activity(s) are described, list all the destinations to be visited during the course of the semester. If there is no set list or students will have the choice from several options, list all options or descriptions of the options (ex. forests within a 20 mile radius)

As the faculty member of record it is suggested that you keep copies of these forms in case you have a student with a medical condition that may be aggravated through participation in the proposed activities (ex. allergies)

If the trip will be utilizing rented vehicles, only the faculty member and students who can document completion of the College’s Defensive Driving course are able to drive. To confirm a student’s completion of Defensive Driving training, contact Jane Ellsworth (358-2242, jellswor@keene.edu).

I hope your winter break was restful and you were able to spend some time re-charging, whether you took time off or just enjoyed the relative quiet of the campus.

Unfortunately, December’s brightness was dimmed by the shootings in Newtown, CT and from e-mails I’ve received, I know this event weighs heavily on you, as teachers, as parents and as compassionate members of the world community. The recent shootings at Caspar College and Hazard Community College add to the heightened anxiety individuals may feel. While crime statistics reinforce that college campuses are safer than non-campus areas, it still feels like our learning communities are targets for these incidents. At least part of this is the amount of media attention these incidents draw reminding us of these tragedies while singular street crimes that occur hundreds of times a day go unnoticed.

Whether the source of our concern is the number of incidents that occur or our perception because of the amount of information available through our 24 hour news cycle, the purpose of this e-mail is to provide information so we are better prepared as a community. I hope the information provided below and attached is helpful to you.

Emergency Procedures are posted in each classroom on campus near exit doors. These have been posted since 2008 and recently updated (the updated procedures are on green paper and going up this weekend). A more complete emergency handbook is available online at: http://www.keene.edu/emergency/.

I have also attached a copy if you would like to discuss the procedures with your class or department or if you would like to post them in your office.

If you teach in a classroom where there is no Emergency Procedure sheet, please e-mail me with the building and room number and I will make sure one is posted ASAP.

We continue to work closely with the Keene Police Department to coordinate information exchange and emergency response. Campus Safety monitors and responds toall emergency responses to campus by the Keene Police and Fire Departments.

Make students aware of what to do in an emergency, even if it is as simple as having them dial 9-1-1.

Consider putting emergency procedures in your syllabi.

If you have not yet signed up for the CityWatch Emergency Notification System since July 1, 2012, please click on CityWatch or cut and paste this link into your browser:

Contact 9-1-1 or Campus Safety (358-2228) immediately if you observe any of the following:

Any individual showing or carrying a weapon on campus

Any direct threat to a person, place or system

An individual who identifies plans, tools, weapons, materials, and/or timeframein which to carry out an attack

An individual has expressed specific plans of self-harm

The most important thing you can do is to be observant and contact someone if any behavior isof concern to you. The College has systems in place to assist and support students, faculty and staff that may be experiencing stress.

Student concerns – contact Dean of Students Gail Zimmerman at gzimmerman@keene.edu, Counseling Center at 358-2437 or Campus Safety at 358-2228

Other behaviors that you would consider unusual for this individual based on prior experience

In the next several weeks, Campus Safety will be hosting training for faculty, staff and students on emergency management and procedures. Class schedules and sign-up links will be distributed via the GAL. A message similar to this, applicable to students, will be posted and sent out via the MyKSC site.

I look forward to seeing you all in the coming days and hope that your recent break was joyous, warm and flu free. If not, I share your agony and hope that you are feeling better.

This is the first of a brief series of topical emails you will receive from me in the coming hours-I wanted to limit emails to you over the break, so bear with me please.

First topic:The Flu

As we prepare for the full return to campus next week, I call your attention to the message from our Director of the Center for Health and Wellness (forwarded below). We have sought to actively communicate with students our expectation that they will contact their faculty if they are unable to return to campus for first class meetings next week.

In anticipation that some students may not meet this expectation, I would ask you to demonstrate leniency with regard to seat availability if a student is absent on the first day, but has not contacted you. Please consider the creation of a waiting list for those students seeking seats in a course. If you have not heard from a registered student within 24 hours of the first class meeting, please support the course addition for a student on the waiting list, as possible given course enrollment caps.

As was shared today in our campus meeting by Chris, we believe the peak in flu incidence may have passed in New Hampshire, but for our surrounding states we remain unsure of the impact for the first few weeks of our spring semester. Thank you for your patience as we anticipate some unsettled attendance patterns.